Displaying Category: News

Sort of. I just finished a first pass at allowing visitors to post comments anonymously. Note that all anonymous (non-logged in) comments will go into moderation awaiting approval before being visible in an article. The only other major catch is that these anonymous comments are, for now, only available at a top level and will not work as threaded comments. That's probably not too difficult to fix, I'm just tired right now.

Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions to improve this feature!

I came across Jeremy Clarkson's review of the new Honda Insight and found it both delightfully entertaining and, well, insightful. To summarize, Mr. Clarkson found the car to be not so good:

It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

I highly recommend reading the article just for all the new and interesting ways Clarkson expresses his dislike for the vehicle. Part of me, though, is bothered not by the review, but by the really terrible car Honda seems to have produced. I've owned Acuras for the last twelve years and I rather like Honda's vehicles (and Clarkson does indicate that Honda doesn't usually produce cars this bad), so it's kind of sad to hear about the company slipping this badly.

With all the fun stuff out of the way, though, I think there's a more important message on the second and third pages of the review. What I get out of this and something I've felt since the introduction of hybrid vehicles, is that hybrid really isn't the way to go. We need to abandon the internal combustion engine and move on to something that just makes sense, and whatever that is, it must be better than what we have now with our gasoline powered engines.

I've never really been interested in hybrid vehicles. It seems so half-assed, like, "yeah, we recognize there's a problem, but we really don't want to solve it. So, for those of you who feel guilty, we'll sell you this over-priced, environmentally negative car so you can at least feel better about yourself... even if that feeling is entirely unjustified."

I may not be part of the solution, but I am perfectly fine with waiting for the next revolution in engineering to switch away from the internal combustion engine. I also feel the only reasonable path that we can see from where we're standing now are hydrogen powered vehicles. The biggest trick to hydrogen is making it in some way that doesn't cost us more energy to generate than we get from it, and distribution. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but these seem like solvable problems to me...

Also, the Insight really looks way too much like a Prius... Seriously, can we get some innovation here? kthx

ABC is remaking the 1980s sci-fi miniseries "V" this time starring a short-haired Morena Baccarin (Firefly, Stargate SG-1) as the leader of the alien race. ABC has posted some preview clips from the upcoming series, expected to run four seasons with 13-22 episodes each season.

I'm still not sure what to feel when confronted by yet another remake of a program I remember fondly from my childhood. On the one hand, I wonder why we aren't getting any original programming, and on the other, I am extremely excited to revisit something I enjoyed so much, but with better writing and effects. I'll give it a chance.

Consolidating some of what I've seen in the news on i09 today, Dollhouse and Chuck will return next season, though both with slightly lower budgets, and Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles has officially been terminated.

It's definitely bittersweet news. I really like Dollhouse and TSCC both, and it's tough for me to say which I would choose to live and which to die. In the end, I'm just happy at least one of them will be living on, even if it is getting hooked up to life-support.

Based on a tweet from Eliza Dushku (via io9), "DOLLHOUSE talk's are goin' on~..." I think I still have one episode left to watch, but I would definitely love to see more Dollhouse next season.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which teenagers and children are entrusted with the safety and security of the world, nae, the galaxy through the application of advanced technology and, quite often, giant robots! You're probably thinking, "Hey, we've seen this before! Voltron(s), Power Rangers, G-Force, etc."

The highly intelligent and humorous bunch from Robot Chicken have developed a show that tries to demonstrate what would really happen if we entrusted our teenagers with giant robots... Enter Titan Maximum!

I'm sold.

News is breaking around the webiverse that infamous 3D Realms, the creators of the irreverent Duke Nukem series, has been shuttered. The followup to Duke Nukem 3D was originally announced back in 1997 and has now been vaporware for (doing the math) ~12 years. I've known at least two people who worked on that project at some point and the stories we've heard... wow.

I seriously doubt anyone will shed a thought about shedding a tear over this news, though it's always sad to see developers lose their jobs... it might just be time to move on, folks.

I seriously hate the word "swine." Like in a "Knights who say Ni" sort of way, as if speaking this word would cause me physical pain, or at least mild discomfort. This declaration of hatred has nothing to do with the current outbreak of Influenza A H1N1 2009 ("swine flu"), but obviously, the constant utterance of this word lately in connection with the outbreak is causing me a great deal of discomfort.

But you know, I'm dealing...

The CDC estimates about 36,000 people die annually in the United States of "regular" influenza strains. By comparison, only one person has died of swine flu in the United States.

So really folks, it's fine if you want to keep the pigs in the house with you, but if your spouse or child comes home with regular flu symptoms, seriously, put'em out back in the isolation chamber.

I've been using Ubuntu on my EeePC 901 since I got it last summer. I started out with Hoary and soon migrated to Intrepid. It's served me well for my limited needs on this little machine. A couple days ago I upgraded to 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope and first wanted to point out something that immediately caught my attention right there on their homepage. You see, the copy says "Desktop Edition" except they are showing an image of a laptop. This may seem like nit-picking, but there is a difference. I actually see this more as evidence of how the perception of what a PC is has changed. I don't have the stats, but I expect we're getting to that point where more people have laptops than desktops, so now the "desktop" is actually a laptop. Crazy.

Anyway, after the upgrade to Jaunty, things were pretty solid. Boot time has been improved and everything that I care about seems to work out of the box... EXCEPT for the graphics driver. I use compiz effects and I like them. The problem is, the performance in Jaunty is completely unacceptable. After searching around I discovered several reports and bugs posted about this horrid performance in the pre-release versions. Now keeping in mind that one of the major selling points of this release is its excellent usability on netbooks (like the 901), except that most of these netbooks use some form of the Intel integrated graphics chipset, and performance in Jaunty on these chipsets is unusable. So yes, Ubuntu works wonderfully on netbooks as long as you don't use it on netbooks. They need to add that to the copy. People don't really read this crap anyway...

This little rant wouldn't be complete without a way to actually fix the problem, which I have found. You can find instructions in the wiki on how to install the Intel graphics driver from 8.10 Intrepid, which I have tested and seem to work just fine. Go get'em!